19/09/2005

From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.

Monday 19 September, 2005

First reactions on yesterday's federal elections...

The results of yesterday's federal elections were far closer
than anticipated. The strongest party was the CDU/CSU, with 35.2
percent, the second was the SPD with 34.3 percent. But this is widely seen as a personal defeat for CDU
chancellor candidate Angela Merkel, who looked set for an absolute majority just a few months ago. Both Merkel and incumbent SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder
are claiming the chancellorship for themselves, as the jostling to form coalitions begins. Possible coalition partners are the
liberal business-oriented FDP (9.8 percent), the left-leaning Linkspartei
(8.7 percent) and the Green Party (8.1 percent).

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitungwrites: "All that Schröder has really shown with his astonishing come-back prior to the election is that he is the best man to whip up enthusiasm for the SPD since August Bebel,
who led the party in the late 19th century. His talent as political
communicator, populariser and actor is compelling, even fascinating.
But unfortunately as chancellor he was, and is, miscast."

Bettina Gaus writes in a commentary in die tageszeitung that Angela Merkel is a wash-up
as a politician, and not as an East-German woman. "The chancellor
candidate aroused the impression that she wanted to bring about
political change. Away from the traditional Rhine Capitalism of the Federal Republic, towards the minimal 'night watchman state'
and the privatisation of the major social risks. What she didn't see
was: Rhine Capitalism is not a socialist invention. Apparently there is
a social consensus that does not want to see the existing 'right of the stronger' to be given ideological underpinning."

Writing in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Heribert Prantl is delighted
that all at once many things are possible and nothing is out of the
question. "This election result, which opens up the way for so many
venturous, even foolhardy coalition options is a first in the history
of the Federal Republic. It is not an alarming situation, it's simply
new. The political power relationships in Germany are doing a square-dance.
And the country has a new image: the big two parties are no longer so
big, the smaller ones are no longer so small. Besides the truncated CDU
and a SPD, which gained power in their traditional stronghold states,
the smaller parties are now a middle-power."

The Neue Zürcher Zeitungwrites that the standoff between the major parties is the worst outcome possible. "The current situation leaves no viable options for the future, and that is a calamity of
huge proportions. One is tempted to say this fact must first sink into
the collective consciousness. The German people must look in the mirror
and ask what they really want. Only then can parliament adopt
legislation allowing it to dissolve itself in an orderly way, and give voters a second chance. There must at least be a sufficient majority for that."

Uwe Vorkötter, editor-in-chief of the Berliner Zeitung,writes
in a commentary titled "Merkel's Victory, Merkel's Defeat" that a grand
coalition of centre-left and conservative parties is possible. "At
best, the grand coalition can accomplish a limited mandate. That
consists of de-blocking everything that has been blocked until
now. For example there is a list of all subsidies that are long overdue
to be dismantled, a list Roland Koch (CDU premier of Hessen) and Peer Steinbrück (former SPD premier and now opposition leader in North-Rhine Westphalia) have agreed on."

In the culture section of the Berliner Zeitung, Arno Widmann looks back on the past two legislature periods. "Seven years of SPD-Green Party rule was not an era, it was a breather.... In 1998 there was no Red-Green project.
There was no idea of what a new order for the Federal Republic of
Germany might look like. There was not even a government programme, and
for anyone who can remember that far back, there was not even a
governing team."

In other stories...Frankfurter Rundschau, 19.09.2005

Peter Michalzik finds Christof Nel's staging of Euripides' "The Bacchae" at the Schauspiel Frankfurt "crude"; the only seductive thing about it was Josef Ostendorf'sDionysus: "Dionysus! That is brave. The god of intoxication and theatre, the great seducer and destroyer, a guy with a huge gut and tits, naked except for a flowered skirt on his haunches and square sun glasses? His blond curly hair is combed back, a little feminine. He tells us how Zeus burnt his mother and how Thebes, the city of his birth, still refuses to accept him as Zeus' son. He's been exiled, a refugee. And now he returns home. Then this naked fat man says, somewhat playfully, "that's me" and raises his right leg suggestively. This Dionysus seems injured, shy, benign and he's got his grip on us; we already believe it's him. And we believe that Josef Ostendorf is a huge rogue, the most commodious seducer that one can possibly imagine."

Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 19.09.2005

Paul Jandl has visited the Burgtheater in Vienna fifty years after its reopening, and writes an entertaining article about life behind the scenes. For example novice Teresa Weißbach (photo), who jumps in one production from a height of five metres into a cushion Ã¢â¬â which one hopes the stage hands have properly prepared. Her elderly colleague Ignaz Kirchner comments: "'She's young. No, I wouldn't do that. All you need is one so-called human error
and you end up sitting in a wheelchair.' Playing the dying servant Firs
in Chekhov's 'The Cherry Orchard', Kirchner drags himself across the
stage before the curtain falls. 'If I die in just any old way and the
curtain falls on top of me, I'm toast for the rest of my life.'" In another article, Barbara Villiger-Heilig writes on the secret passageways in the huge theatre.

Botho Strauß special

The Schauspielhaus Zurich has launched its season, the first under the directorship of Matthias Hartmann, with his staging of Botho Strauss' comedy "Nach der Liebe beginnt ihre Geschichte" (after the love, begins its story). The critics are divided. Christopher Schmidt, writing in the Suddeutsche Zeitung, is decidedly unimpressed by Hartmann's opening work. "He exhausts the technical apparatus with cool perfection. A high-end performance of fine mechanics is executed, which will appeal to the clockmaker in every Swiss."

The play reminded Barbara Villeger-Heilig of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung of Michel Houllebecq's most recent novel "The possibility of an island"; both are works "where humanity is fighting against the loss of the ability to love. Two neo-romantics. Both are asking the question how a woman and man can find each other in today's panorama of existential orientations. Both criticise the changing spirit of the times, both contrast it with their conservative notions of commitment."

And FAZ critic Gerhard Stadelmaier hails the performance to the heavens: "'Nach der Liebe beginnt ihre Geschichte' is a pious comedy for the society to come: the drama of a dramatist's conviction that there has to be something to hang onto in this non-committal world."

Saturday 17 September, 2005

Die Welt, 17.09.2005

HistorianGerd Koenenwrites an engaging article on the "pre-political enthusiasm"
with which German intellectuals looked to Russia in the 1930s Ã¢â¬â and at
the same time failed to see what was happening in the West. "As a
negative indicator, you could take the fact that 'Russian Berlin', with
its enormous density of emigrant artists and intellectuals, was
emptying at a dramatic rate as early as the mid-1920s. The reasons were
not only social, they also had to do with the reigning atmosphere.
'White' Russian immigrants, whether socialists, liberals or
monarchists, Jewish intellectuals or Russian nobles, were treated as 'has-beens' much more categorically in Germany than in France or America."See our feature article "Thankmar, the young Krahl" by Gerd Koenen.

Saturday 11 - 17 December, 2010

A clutch of German newspapers launch an appeal against the criminalisation of Wikileaks. Vera Lengsfeld remembers GDR dissident Jürgen Fuchs and how he met death in his cell. All the papers were bowled over Xavier Beauvois' film "Of Gods and Men." The FR enjoys a joke but not a picnic at a staging of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Berlin. Gustav Seibt provides a lurid description of Napoleonic soap in the SZ. German-Turkish Dogan Akhanli author explains what it feels like to be Josef K. read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 December

Colombian writer Hector Abad defends Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa against European Latin-America romantics. Wikileaks dissident Daniel Domscheit-Berg criticises the new publication policy of his former employer. The Sprengel Museum has put on a show of child nudes by die Brücke artists. The SZ takes a walk through the Internet woods with FAZ prophet of doom Frank Schirrmacher. The FAZ is troubled by Christian Thielemann's unstable tempo in the Beethoven cycle. And the FR meets China Free Press publisher, Bao Pu.read more

Saturday 27 November - Friday 3 December

Danish author Frederik Stjernfelt explains how the Left got its culturist ideas. Slavenka Draculic writes about censoring Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film in Bosnia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit talksÃÂ ÃÂ about his friendship, falling out and reconciliation with Jean-Luc Godard. Wikileaks has caused an embarrassed silence in the Arab world, where not even al-Jazeera reported on the what the sheiks really think. Alan Posener calls for the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden to be shut down.read more

Saturday 20 - Friday 26 November, 2010

The theatre event of the week came in a twin pack: Roland Schimmelpfennig's new play, a post-colonial "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" opened at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Thalia in Hamburg. The anarchist pamphlet "The Coming Insurrection" has at last been translated into German and has ignited the revolutionary sympathies of at least two leading German broadsheets, the FAZ and the SZ. But the taz, Germany's left-wing daily, says the pamphlet is strongly right-wing. What's left and right anyway? came the reply.read more

Saturday 13 - Friday 19 November, 2010

Dieter Schlesak levels grave accusations against his former friend and colleague, Oskar Pastior, who spied on him for the Securitate. Banat-Swabian author and vice chairman of the Oskar Pastior Foundation, Ernest Wichner, turns on Schlesak for spreading malicious rumours. Die Zeit portrays the Berlin rapper Harris, and the moment he knew he was German. Dutch author Cees Nooteboom meditates on the near lust for physical torture in the paintings of Francisco de Zurburan. An exhibition in Mannheim displays the dream house photography of Julius Schulman.read more

Saturday 6 - Friday 12 November, 2010

The NZZ asks why banks invest in art. The FAZ gawps at the unnatural stack of stomach muscles in Michelangelo's drawings. The taz witnesses a giant step for the "Yugo palaver". Bernard-Henri Levy describes Sakineh Ashtiani's impending execution as a test for Iran and the west.Journalist Michael Anti talks about the healthy relationship between the net and the Chinese media. Literary academic Helmut Lethen describes how Ernst Jünger stripped the worker of all organic substances.read more

Saturday 30 October - Friday 5 November, 2010

Now that German TV has just beatifiedPope Pius XII, Rolf Hochmuth tells die Welt where he got the idea for his play "The Deputy". The FR celebrates Elfriede Jelinek's "brilliantly malicious" farce about the collapse of the Cologne City Archive. "Carlos" director Olivier Assayas makes it clear that the revolutionary subject is a figment of the imagination. The SZ returns from the Shanghai Expo with a cloying after-taste of sweet 'n' sour. And historian Wang Hui tells the NZZ that China's intellectuals have plenty of freedom to pose critical questions.read more

Saturday 23 - Friday 29 October, 2010

Author Doron Rabinovici protests against the concessions of moderate Austrian politicians to the FPÖ: recently in Vienna, children were sent back to Kosovo at gunpoint. Ian McEwan wonders why major German novelists didn't mention the Wall. The NZZ looks through the Priz Goncourt shortlist and finds plenty of writers with more bite than Houellebecq. The FAZ outs two of Germany's leading journalists who fiercely guarded the German Foreign Ministry's Nazi past. Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt analyse the symptoms of culturalism, left and right. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht demonstratively yawns at German debate.read more

Saturday 16 - Friday 22 October, 2010

A new book chronicles the revolt of revolting "third persons" at Suhrkamp publishers in the wild days of 1968. Necla Kelek is appalled by the speech of the very Christian Christian Wulff, the German president, in Turkey. The taz met a new faction of hardcore Palestinians who are fighting for separate sex hairdressing in Gaza. Sinologist Andreas Schlieker reports on the new Chinese willingness to restructure the heart. And the Cologne band Erdmöbel celebrate the famous halo around the frying pan.read more

Saturday 9 - Friday 15 October, 2010

The FR laps up the muscular male bodies and bellies at the Michelangelo exhibition in the Viennese Albertina. The same paper is outraged by the cowardice of the Berlin exhibition "Hitler and the Germans". Mario Vargas-Llosa remembers a bad line from Sweden. Theologist Friedrich Wilhelm Graf makes it very clear that Western values are not Judaeo-Christian values. The Achse des Guten is annoyed by the attempts of the mainstream media to dismiss Mario Vargas-Llosa. The NZZ celebrates the tireless self-demolition of Polish writer and satirist Slawomir Mrozek.read more

Saturday 2 - Friday 8 October, 2010

Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare explains why his country has become uninhabitable. German Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji says Switzerland only pretends to be liberal. German author Monika Maron is not surethat Islam really does belong to Germany. Russian writer Oleg Yuriev explains the disastrous effects of postmodernism on the Petersburg Hermitage. Argentinian author Martin Caparros describes how the Kirchners have co-opted the country's revolutionary history. And publisher Damian Tabarovsky explains why 2001 was such an explosively creative year for Argentina.read more

Saturday 25 September - Friday 1 October

Three East German theatre directors talk about the trauma of reunification. In the FAZ, Thilo Sarrazin denies accusations that his book propagates eugenics: "I am interested in the interplay of nature and nurture." Polemics are being drowned out by blaring lullabies, author Thea Dorn despairs. Author Iris Radisch is dismayed by the state of the German novel - too much idle chatter, not enough literary clout. Der Spiegel posts its interview with the German WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt. And Vaclav Havel's appeal to award the Nobel prize to Liu Xiabobo has the Chinese authorities pulling out their hair.read more

Saturday 18 - Friday 24 September, 2010

Herta Müller's response to the news that poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant was one of overwhelming grief: "When he returned home from the gulag he was everybody's game." Theatre director Luk Perceval talks about the veiled depression in his theatre. Cartoonist Molly Norris has disappeared after receiving death threats for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed" campaign. The Berliner Zeitung approves of the mellowing in Pierre Boulez' music. And Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, allowed to leave China for the first time, explains why schnapps is his most important writing tool.read more

Saturday 10 - Friday 17 September, 2010

The poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant, the historian Stefan Sienerth has discovered. Biologist Veronika Lipphardt dismisses Thilo Sarrazin'sincendiary intelligence theories as a load of codswallop. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals in Germany have written an open letter to President Christian Wulff, calling for him to "make a stand for a democratic culture based on mutual respect." And a Shell study has revealed that Germany's youth aspire to be just like their parents.read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 September, 2010

Thilo Sarrazin has buckled under the stress of the past two weeks and resigned from the board of the Central Bank. His book, "Germany is abolishing itself", however, continues to keep Germany locked in a debate about education and immigration and intelligence. Also this week, Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been awarded the M100 prize for defending freedom of opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the award ceremony: "The secret of freedom is courage". The FAZ interviewed Westergaard, who expressed his disappointment that the only people who had shown him no support were those of his own class. read more